When Google announced last week that they had undergone a series of sophisticated attacks on their GMail servers specifically aimed at human rights activists in China, Google surmised that it was an attack by the Chinese governmen, although they did not, in fact, detail the evidence that had led them to the conclusion. Virus protection firm McAfee didn’t point their finger at China, but did note that the scope of the attacks was unprecedented except in the arena of government espionage.

Based upon Google’s sudden change of stance on doing business in China in the wake of the attacks, as well as McAfee’s comments, it seemed likely, but not certain, China was behind everything. But now an American computer security researcher seems to have clinched it, discovering strong evidence of digital fingerprints of Chinese authors in the software programs used in the attacks.

Joe Stewart, a malware specialist with Secureworks, said he determined the main program used in the attack contained a module based on a very unique and unusual algorithm that was originally published in a Chinese technical paper that has never been seen outside of China.

“If you look at the code in a debugger you see patterns that jump out at you,” he said.

This doesn’t inconclusively prove China’s culpability… but let’s face facts. We’ll never know for sure if China was to blame, but they’re the only people who had anything to gain from the attacks. I think, at this point, we can all take it as read.